Dale Winton, start panicking

Quite often (approx once a week in fact) I speak to my mum on the phone. ‘What are you doing today?’ I enquire.
‘Going to the supermarket,’ she replies. I no longer wait for her to continue ‘then…’ because that’s all she’ll have on that day (usually a Thursday). It’s the one time of the week that my ageing gran gets out of the house, and is, according to my mum, an extremely tiresome and time consuming task. nan has turned the weekly shop into a royal walkaboutesque affair, and apparently lingers infuriatingly over items she has no need or desire for (step away from the tampons, we're about to get a parking ticket!)
Having visited one or two Australian supermarkets of late, I think I am turning into my mum (or worse, my nan), because doing the shopping here could quite easily now take me best part of the day.
I cannot believe how badly laid out and signposted the supermarkets are in this country.
Now, whenever I write a shopping list I almost feel like adding binoculars and a step ladder: binoculars because none of the aisles are signposted at the end, instead there are tiny labels half way down each one with, in tiny letters, a random selection of SOME of the things you’ll find there. A selection mind. How anyone with less than perfect vision manages to do their shopping in less that four hours is beyond me as you have to wander half way down each aisle before you can read that actually there’s nothing there you want.
The step ladder is to help me get stuff from the top shelves – this is normally where anything you might actually want is kept. I am relatively tall but even I struggle to reach some of the stuff kept way on high. The other day, no word of a lie, I came across a granny pushing stuff along the top shelf with her walking stick. ‘Can I help?’ I asked, suddenly coming over all ASDA advert. ‘No, I’m fine thanks, that’s why I brought my stick.’!
There is also not the ready meal culture here that us Brits have embraced. Which is hardly a wonder given that the few just heat and serve options that are available come in transparent vacuum packed bags, meaning that the lentil and back soup and chicken stew look like they’ve already been eaten and thrown back up again.
And as for shopping logically, forget it. The other day, unable to find a hairdryer anywhere in the ‘small domestic electricals’ section of our local superstore (not for me, natch, I have no thatch) we asked one of the assistants, who, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world asked us ‘have you looked next to lipsticks?’. Weird. Weirder still was that the hairdryers were, indeed, right next to the lipsticks. Which were next to magazines.
So, did the visual merchandising team think ‘let’s put the stuff our shoppers use together in the same place’? If so the missed out on some great ‘double selling’ opportunities. For example, laxatives could have gone next to toilet paper also next to the magazines (though you may have to relocate the hairdryers) and milk could nestle next to the cereals along with the morning after pill and pregnancy testing kits…